


my ink's run out

by amhinyard



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Other, this is just sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 00:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9297089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amhinyard/pseuds/amhinyard
Summary: How angry Harry should have been after looking at Snape's memories.





	

When Harry lifts his head from the pensieve, he’s met with a question. _Why is his face wet?_ Is it sweat, or is it the tears that threaten to drown him?

A storm of emotions swirls in his chest like caged birds eager to break free and at the first available second they all lunge for an exit, his lips part and a broken sob falls through them into the cold, echoing silence that surrounds him. 

_Pig for slaughter._

_When the time comes, the boy must die._

So then, that’s how things go. How things have always been. This life, the life he’s been told his parents had died for, has never truly been his own. The life he’s made for himself, the people he’s surrounded himself with, the people he’s _fought_ for, he’s not supposed to stay with them. Harry Potter’s life has only ever been a tested theory, and one day, _today of all days_ , he’s supposed to give it all up.

A noble sacrifice.

The one they’re all counting on.

A necessity. There’s nobody else that can do it. 

That almost gives him a small piece of comfort. Nobody else has to die at the hand of Voldemort, and after this, nobody ever will again. Only Harry. The Boy Who Lived, now The Boy Who Dies. 

That’ll be the headline. Rita Skeeter, if she’s made it out of all this alive, will have an absolute panic over the fact she knows nothing about him, but she’ll write about how brave he was. Everyone will. The Prophet. Kingsley, when he’s the Minister for Magic, like he _deserves_ , will make Harry’s name sacred, put it in stone. He’ll be remembered. 

But he won’t be there.

He’ll be dead.

Suddenly, even the small comforts become terrifying shadowy thoughts that want to grow and swallow him whole. 

Dumbledore’s office has never seemed smaller.

Dumbeledore. Instinctively, Harry kicks at his desk several times and hisses when his foot recoils in pain. He spends time with his head in his hands, screaming in anguish and crying at the betrayal he'd never thought he'd ever face. All of this is so _fucking unfair_ , _you bastard. You fucking bastard with your lies and your promises._  Wiping at his eyes and with heavy breaths, he looks around the room where the man once stood, the man Harry thought had saved him. The man who was really only keeping him tethered, tied to a post like Buckbeak had been before he was due to be executed. 

_Fuck you._

He’s grateful they haven’t finished Dumbledore’s portrait yet. He doesn't think he could deal with being told that he’s a _brave boy_ , that he _thinks the world of him_. 

_Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you_.

How long was he going to pretend Harry had a chance? If he hadn’t died, would he have told him by now? Would Harry be standing here with him, in this room, being prepped and coddled into dying? 

He doesn’t know, he doesn’t want to know what he would’ve done. 

It’s what he _should have done_. Harry might understand, now, he might be happy to walk into the firing line and take the curse, he might be ready to die if he’d known. 

But he hadn’t, and all of these small realisations are like knives in his chest.

Painful.

Horrifyingly painful.

The realisation that his time has been borrowed is the worst. That now he knows he has to pay the debt, hold hands with the devil and willingly follow his lead is like pointing his wand at himself and muttering, _Crucio_. 

Even worse, having the ghost of Albus Dumbledore do it for him.

But there’s no question of whether he’ll do it.

He has to.

If he does, then there’s only the snake. Just the snake, and then Voldemort is vulnerable, he can be killed. 

Hermione might make it through this, if Harry dies. Ron, too. Ron’s already lost too much, suffered enough at the hands of Harry Potter.

Sometimes he wonders if they’d do it all again. 

Harry knows he would.

Even it all still came to this, to gathering the courage to die so that everyone else has the chance, the choice to live, he knows he’d still buy the sweets on the train and watch Ron stuff his face. 

He’d let Hermione fix his glasses and laugh when she looks at Scabbers with such disgust he couldn’t even fathom it. He might even shake Draco’s hand, and he might be in Slytherin.

He’d still save Ginny, Sirius, Buckbeak. He’d save Cedric, the next time and maybe he’d try to kill Voldemort then and there, in that graveyard.

He’d still found the DA. He’d love with every inch of his tainted soul and he’d laugh and cry and _live_. God, he’d live it all again even if it _still came to this_.

To dying. 

To being their martyr. 

Because that’s just the way things go, and that’s how his life has been planned. He can break from his tether, but still, he’ll walk into that forest and he’ll face it all.

For them.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! i thought about this for a long, long time.


End file.
